


ruins within ruins

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Foreplay, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Touching, Not Beta Read, ansgt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:59:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara runs from a ghost. The TARDIS after one. The Doctor is nowhere to be found.</p><p>A/N: Inspired by the infamous Steven Moffat's “Not in the ways you’ll think.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	ruins within ruins

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Brothel by Susanne Sundfor
> 
> Timeline: Prologue to JttCotT 
> 
> If you wonder about River's first tea shared with the Doctor, it's there:  
> [ _Mapping her life_ ](../works/615866)
> 
>  The tags make it sound more gruesome than it is. I guess.

_go away you little girl, you little bug caught in the wheels._

doesn’t she know she’ll be crushed?

she can’t time, but she can the fly.

_will you step into my parlor?_

she marshmallows the girl, not yesterday.

ever, for the girl is always there, always have been.

***

 

The ship doesn’t like her. Like a cat, he said. A cat has claws and can survive high, high falls.

She can’t.

 

The ship would be his tomb, he is starting to suspect it. Some nights he loses himself so deep in the ship he gives up finding his way back and waits for the lighthouse to signal him. Collapsed and stunned, shoulders pinned to a wall, he waits. For Clara to get lost with him. For his TARDIS to attend to him. And flush him out.

_Clara, call me back, where I can breathe, where there is still air. I have dead people in my ship._

 

***

what is not her is colour and story, and cries so many and kisses so very.

she has power, power, power. she wants love, love, love. and words. that is no power.

touches and sweet, laughs and pretty, hands held and do not let go. she wants.

kisses numberless in the water room.

hugs tight and long in the console room.

and books and books in the library,

but silence also in the library.

so the thief bangs doors and she throws the library in the swimming pool. except not always,

because sometimes he wants the pool without the books,

but never the books without the swimming pool anymore.

and with the library, the books and books and stupid books. bigger on the inside.

she’s not jealous.

***

 

First time it happened she didn’t budge, didn’t snitch in front of the Doctor. She reasoned; placed in a position to choose between chastising his ship and rebuffing Clara, he would never take the latter’s defense. And the ship kept doing it again and again, breaking her things, her pocket mirror and pencils, three heels and a bracelet, the corner of her books.

Her allocated room -storage room really, never slept in, and for reasons- became a puzzle, her everyday rituals an absurd campaign against the immutable; the cow stuck her sheets together once.

She doesn’t tell him. Scratching the surface he is still. Still not letting her in. He distrusts her, he tests her. Again and again.

And his ship performs, moments after moments, punctures after punctures, tests of her own.

Scattering her belongings.

Quartering.

 

Dragged down. Deep and dead weight, anchor her on the bottom of the sea, he would not drift anymore.

He could.

Will not however. Martha was once wasted on such vagaries.

He would not ask Clara to burn for him, not another one. He doesn’t care that much if she is a trap. He would welcome such conclusion to his story. The lamb losing the wolf. His minute attacks work as repellent, he rejoices in her taking them, gulping in. It means he can drag her further. It means she can take it a little longer. A little rougher.

Such resilience. He admires her. Except she is impossible and impossible never fared well with longevity. He does not fear what she could eventually inflict on him. But what he will do to her in retaliation. He already has started.

Truth is he has no desire to waste time on niceties –he wants her to stand where she should, march when she must to his pace. He lost so many to wandering off. To going on expeditions. To looking back.

_Stay in place. Don’t die before I find out who you are._

And still and silent, he can study her. He did, thoroughly. Drowned his guilt in the delicacies of the human heart, took notes of her first tooth, got hold of her first kiss. He invested her life.

There is no way she can return the favour.

 

***

_why would I run?_

_i know what’s going to happen next and it’s funny._

not funny. eerie. humans do make distinction.

terror is a man.

she revels in their waltzings. they are necessary. they are inevitable.

co-existing, the tear of the conflagration and the consecutive soothing sweep by her heart, and she pinches and comforts in the same bar.

exhibit one

exhibit two

exhibit three

attack.

***

 

“Do you really have to be that insensitive?”

It comes a day when she is tired. Small and helpless, as the ship has just mismatched all her spare socks. He must know, she thought. He could not ignore any longer this silly cat and mouse game. All her remarks, actions and attentions are driven by this certainty he can break through this veiled distrust he bestowed upon her -she has a vague impression she inherited this burden from someone.

“Was I? Insensitive. When?”

“With Emma, did you have to… “

He bops her nose and she swats back. More probing. She will end up snapping.

“Stop that.”

The pound of flesh above his eyes quivers slightly. A lonesome strand of hair is casting a bleak shadow on his sunken cheeks. This dodging of the head, diving to take the bashing, she knows well. Her father and Mr. Maitland after him were the same. Asking for help, not daring to voice the plea. The dreary gazes and unrequited regrets exhausted her patience, but she stayed.

The trick is to lure him out of it.

“Don’t you care?”

He opens his arms, in way of apology. His face quizzically contorts. “Of course I care. I always care. Clara?”

Still shunning away. Or dragging her down.

“It’s okay. I used to be quite like that.” She offers him a tentative smile. “Losing someone.”

“I lost nothing.” His knuckles are white under the console light. He shrivels up but she catches his words. “I never did have it in the first place.”

“Someone you loved?”

Letting go of the contraption he is working on, he straightens and swirls past her. His face is unreadable.

“No one, I tell you. When someone is gone, it is just gone. There is no point in transmitting your personal experience like germs.”

It was nothing more than a squabble over lack of words, over wrong words in the wrong places. He probably doesn’t even notice she is cross with him.

She leaves him tinkering and paddling.

Whatever happened within these walls, it’s a wonder he is not the one with a dagger between the shoulder blades.

 

***

he used to love. no.

not just.

surge-love, screw-love.

loot-love.

left him bereft.

left her childless.

***

 

Once she is propped up against a panel, she panics as her lips are pressed by full blown lips, hungry. Nothing there though, but the air is held together by sorrow and a tangy breath, and desperate, desperate longing. It seems the moment the shadow tastes her, it pulls back and she can almost see the sob hanging in the air.

Her heart totters in her chest, sunk to the stomach. Dreadfully unbearable feeling to be ganged up by sorrow so physically.

Phantoms haunt the place. She hears them sing and laugh. It is customary requirement in a sentient ship.

Or so she thought.

It’s the ship. Much more than an appliance doing its job.

There are doors everywhere, doors she knows she is not allowed to open. She feels the TARDIS is mocking her.

It pains her because the way the ship curves her corridors have the appearance of arms waiting to receive a comforting embrace. The ship is hurting and so nasty is her resent she mocks her very pain. Behind the doors are tombs, memories, capsules in times. They are precious.

They are mausoleums she dares not touch.

But being touched by the ghost is another thing entirely.

 

_Clara, run. From here, from me. Clara, go. It’s already too late. It has been for a long long time._

_Pay attention to me_ , she cries. He harks.

Knows only too much what his care amounts to in the end.

Knows too little about her. And too much.

A trail of ghosts is tagging along. He senses it. It sometimes feels as if her very future is held hostage –her past was taken care of by himself.

Promises between them are cast with dismay. _They never, never wake again who sleep upon his bed!_ Something wicked this way comes; she will initiate it, blunt and reckless. Destroyed in the blast, bits of her seem to hang around, across time and space. He checked.

He probably won’t be able to mend her. He has enough in him to patch himself up -and at what price. Not her.

 

***

the fly slams her door.

feels like a slap.

***

 

She bits her.

A spaceship.

In return, her teeth dig in iron door handles.

There is a good chance she lost all sense of proportions in this squabble.

Only because the TARDIS lost it first, it seems.

 

There is a room she keeps always moving, always close to the heart. She thinks he didn’t notice.

A room filled with music of hundreds of gramophones playing all at once. He thought it was music. Only music. Music from thousands of worlds to keep her occupied. It’s not.

Cries and songs of her brothers and sisters, she retrieved from her archive, sometimes painstakingly reconstructing them before the lilt of fizzling nebulas and empires waning.

He forgets he is not the only one to be the last of his kind.

_Sexy?_

She does not answer.

He is now tagging along a corpse, his or hers. What does it make of him?

 

***

dangerous boxed girl. because angles and edges. and sides too many. and no bottom or top whatsoever. this one there is no chance she breaks. already is broken. or will be already.

silly girl, poor fly. does she sound hollow? she mathematically is. he’ll know soon enough, her pretty thief. though she does not tell.

nothing left.

***

 

Why does she want her so much to spend the night in the ship?

The TARDIS keeps singing her to sleep.

In those rare moments she takes a nap in her room.

She may discover a whole band somewhere hidden. With brass and strings.

Or a graveyard.

 

Like clamps on his hearts.

He is held at the bottom of waters.

And his ship is a faithful watchdog.

He whimpers, she snarls.

Good girl, he thinks; that’s how he wants her to be, crude and unfair, when he cannot be, to his companion.

There is something disgusting about the way he clings and sucks at them. Clara, all mysteries and sweet eyes is no exception. When he is too tired to shoo them away, he lets the TARDIS play the bogeyman. Of course, he notices the way she treats Clara, but doesn’t mention it. He is at the time of his life when he needs to be punished for seeming light-hearted. The TARDIS takes it on Clara. Doesn’t nudge; bites and screws and he enjoys it. There is too much adrenaline and wretched liquid within his hearts, disgust and exhilaration.

He dives in, too glad to hold Clara responsible for his happiness and lapses in memories. So he will not talk to his ship; they communicate through torturing Clara, probing, not caring, and being casually insensitive. At least, he acknowledges her.

Still, she offered her a bed –he did not.

 

***

tomb robber she is; she steps where she should not.

and she leaves behind what she should not. bits of her.

always around, little fly. they lie in eternity side by side, in death she is only his shroud; the fly jumps into the tomb.

_go away, stop parading around as what I could never be again, his flesh and bones bride. you lie in death with him._

it’s a waste of freedom. so fragile a thing, when she offers him eternity wrapped in sinews and springs. when the River burns, she burns wholly. evaporates. doesn’t leave bits behind.

of course she does not hurt her.

can’t be a bloodshed when there is no blood left.

the downpour, here.

it’s volcano day in the TARDIS.

***

 

She is thirsty; not even the middle of the night. The book grabbed her and did not release her before late in the afternoon. The Doctor is nowhere to be found. Her steps are loud and the air strangely portent.

To be fair, she does not feel so safe in here, the machine is a cow and the pilot randomly heartless. She needs to know she will not lock her up in a room while he subjects her to heaps of test. Last time she checked she had saved his life quite a few times. She is willing to turn a blind eye on his tantrums, but can only go blindly forth for so long. Most of the adventures he offers are dangerous, no fun and games.

The mechanics and dynamics at play escape her and he consciously keeps her in the dark about them; if ever they are in trouble, she could not take the wheel of the TARDIS; if he hurts she would not know where to fix him. Angie and Artie’s father let her in so quickly, gave her a key so easily.

The Doctor pretends to.

Blindsided, the Doctor and she carry on. Strange and haphazard balance. They could both lose their life at this game.

The lights go out and she startles. The kitchen must have been close. Another round to their stupid game; she always forgets they are three on this blind journey.

The darkness is not complete, she notices; lights are sipping down from the ceiling. And the ship needs a light to cast strange and frightening shadows on the walls. Changing, growing shadows of monsters in the dark. She rolls her eyes, still splays her hand on the walls, letting it caress as she progresses.

What kind of a child the TARDIS takes her for?

There are no monsters in the ship. Only the TARDIS, the Doctor and her. And they are no ghost.

The surface is warm, it’s not just metal. Something to appreciate about the TARDIS, she is alive and breathing; you never are quite alone. Otherwise she would feel just like a tomb; too ominous, too old. Had she not been afraid of properly getting lost in her maze, she would gleefully enjoy the walk. There is something guiltily regressive about scampering in the darkness, faint lights passing her, and sounds –it’s the TARDIS after all. However nasty the ship is, Clara knows she will not harm her –knowingly. She will lead her by the nose – maybe for hours. Yet, will not hurt her.

Says the mouse between the tamed cat’s paws.

But an iron breath caresses her ear and her blood runs cold.

Footsteps in the dark she can endure. This is something else. She steps forward, reasoned; some things are best confronted.

“Hello?”

The ship would not answer.

But a paper cut dryness against her cheek.

The sense of relative control she thought she possessed so far skids around.

She stumbles about, from wall to wall, in search of the vain security of the first steps, in the dark, in the warmth, in the blissful whispers.

But a formol coldness on her lips. In her mouth.

The glass of water is long forgotten. She runs.

Atavistic response. Clara knows it. Still she cannot believe she let herself be marooned in such a manner. The TARDIS has no right to break in. And with each step she gains ground over her.

Walls in her mind are being pushed. And there is a thing knocking faintly.

The book she had in hand lays miles away from her. Isolated in darkness, the edges sharp and senseless. Fallen and she didn’t hear, in these maddening echoing halls.

Going back to her room or running straight to the console room, she would not be surprised to find someone lying in ambush for her, obviously other than the Doctor. She wishes she could defuse the time bomb she unknowingly levelled at herself.

“Stop it.” The lights blasts up back to full power, impeding her vision for half a second.

Or will level at herself.

What in the world did she do to anger her so?

This is wicked, kid cruelty. Next time she meets the Doctor, she will ask him about this moody ship, this moody behaviour of his and the whole stupid charm he entreats her with or snatches with impatience from her hands.

A hand puppet.

The corridors are blankly unknown to her. She sighs.

In the den of the beast.

She is in her clutch and judging by the doctor’s inability to tame his ship, there is no way he can prevent anything from happening to her.

The walls are immense here, somewhat more imposing, and stately. She followed someone or something down there –she thought it was a thing, with horror considers the alternative of it being someone, long lost someone in the maze of the TARDIS. All of time and space, he said, and surely she is not the first to travel with him. Her arms go numb as the distinct freshness of shiver clasps her skin and clots her throat. And holds. There are always people in this ship.

Like stepping into a temple, she knows this place possesses an essence, whether the accumulation of centuries of faiths and prayers or the ringing silence of a deity. The TARDIS is both a fundamental spirit and the lingering choirs of her followers.

But here, something is waiting. Her assailant has stopped and disappeared. She is definitely not alone, though.

The ship is meeting her.

Before her rises a wall, perfectly plain and flat, and that’s it. Creaseless wall, material-less partition. Not a crack.

With trembling hands, she goes forth and meets its complete plainness. The core of the TARDIS appears for a second to be wincing and she knows, immediately, though nothing is telling, that a door should be there, should open to a room or whatever is behind.

At the heart of the TARDIS, there is infinity, and here is a void, a hole in boundlessness; apart from the disturbing missing door, she can feel the sheer attraction of the void beyond, sucking, tearing her in. She can feel also the walls straining to keep their anchor to the floor, yet writhing and peeling on the other side, at the contact of silence. The walls of the TARDIS, whatever the room -be it bathroom or kitchen, she is learning- are built of breaths and echoes, never halting; this room is silent.

Perfectly still; not even death has such disturbing absence of sound; gash of nothingness within her flesh; negative presence; an infinite ship, punctured.

She flinches away from the impermeability, before leaning in. Tremulous, her hand hovers on the surface in search of a difference, a variance, an irregularity. The wall has the smooth, glistening texture of scar tissue.

She knocks; her knuckles on the wall do not emit a sound. But the minute impacts resonate within her bones, and her frame becomes a diapason, and painfully. Something rattles deep inside her and snaps. She buckles, a sore cry escaping her lips, and stumbles away from the wall until her back hits the opposite wall. She covered in her haste all the way down the corridor and the tantalising wall stands miles away before her, unchanged.

“She doesn’t even try to hide it, the beast.”

Tall and barren. Mockingly ominous. This is ridiculous. The ship is acting like a bloody teenager slamming her door in her face whenever she tries to reach her. And the Doctor supports her wild behaviour because he is the Doctor and none the older. Or just doesn’t pay attention to Clara. Which would be worse. Except he does, always probing, always trying her.

_This is just marvellous. I’m not even paid for babysitting them._

She takes a breath and jumps headfirst. Knowing perfectly well she is not experienced enough to deal with them.

“Whatever I do, I mean no harm, just want to travel. You’ll be keeping what is yours, joys and sorrows, and him. Whatever happens between us all, him, you, me, I’m not taking anything with me. Okay? I’m just passing. I don’t want to intrude, I know I do; you two, all wrapped up in your coy smiles and faraway glances. You saw a lot, together. I’m not trying to take that on my shoulder, any of it; your story. I won’t stand in.”

Where she hopes for placation, the ship suddenly shatters and all around her the air seems to shed layers; superimposed on the corridors, like skin-thin canvas, for a second before collapsing, she glances a brown-haired teenage girl rocking, a stewardess with an annoyed expression plastered on the face, a determined roman soldier on a phone and blackness.

Briefly, the atmosphere pulsates with pent-up rage, before extinguishing; the ship built up to something she obviously didn’t achieve. Whatever she tried to conjure did not show up and let her pale and disarmed. She tried to club her with memories, they withered and died.

The structure around, floor and light, cables and doors visually recoil and crumble on themself, as though to curl up and clam. One by one the lights go out completely, swallowed by the walls dripping down like parched ivy.

Soon, the walls will grab her and seize and hold. And she doesn’t want to be entombed alive. Not when the silly alien pilot is behind the walls, ignoring the twisted punishment his ship is inflicting on the new pet.

“What do you need? What do you want?” She dares not ask who. She feels as if she is facing Angie a year ago, abraded, hurt, rumpled. Not so raw from the loss of her mother, still tender and red.

The loss of a mother.

Angie reading on the stairs as her mum used to, Clara baking soufflés…

Offering a vessel for memories.

Suddenly, she feels it again, that presence and it hits her. At last.

_Stupid Clara._

It’s not a ghost, it’s the attempt of a ghost, to bring back something from the bottom of her memories –her timeless, alien memories. Something out of grasp; a hand on Clara’s face; the feeling of a brush and breath, disappeared, and most of all, not meant for her, never.

It’s the TARDIS slipping into someone’s worn mannerisms, pretence of memory. Mourning and desperate to summon the departed, when one has no body, when one is an electric mind buzzing at the core of a machine, how to hurt. Angie spent hours on the Internet; Clara shut herself. The TARDIS has miles of corridors to overpour.

Minus one body.

She craves proximity, even the squeamish, reluctant kind Clara only has to offer.

Freshnet on Clara. Soused her body.

Someone loved in this ship. Someone the TARDIS abjectly cared about. On this blank wall, the TARDIS loved and lost.

“It’s okay. Whatever you lost, I do not mean to nag the wound, you know. I’m just here. You can…”

She realises she can’t smile the cocky “I won’t tell anyone you hugged me” she offered Angie in allegiance.

She cannot comfort a ship.

But she knows someone who can.

_No one ever warned me I needed to fix everything in this mad house._

***

the River used to let her in, in their arms and bodies. in their minds. bodies are warm.

she misses warmth.

***

A hand held before her and something slips inside her palm, cold and lined, with fingers delicate and precise.

***

she misses hands cold sneaking to the heated pool of her stomach.

she misses lips like sharks catching waves like hair.

she misses bodies.

***

Perhaps the air cleaves a little too much to her arms and shoulders and thorax.

Clara wonders what the ghost looked like, if she is smaller, if she is nervous.

It doesn’t matter.

She’s not a stand-in.

***

the fly does not let her in. but she lets herself in, the tomb robber.

and here she crawls, here she strokes, here she cares.

 

_he locked me out. how does the River alive felt like?_

_I can’t remember._

_keep me company, little fly._

***

 

“Clara!”

Her name rings in the silent corridors and his legs are still galloping when he realises where exactly she is sitting, cross-legged. At multiple points in his brain and legs, it blasts. He leans against a wall, stone-cold out of breath, refusing to step any closer from her -and from the wall.

“What are you doing here, Clara?”

The corner is so familiar he fears his cranium has taken its shape. He used to bang his head against the wall, in that corner. He used to run for a fall each time he passed the door. Her things would fire at him and he would stumble out, knocked out, still parched, coveting her memories.

But no shackle was strong enough to keep him in this dreaded room. After a will he fought it like an addiction.

And sealed the door.

And annihilated the seal.

Clara is on her feet in a second, facing him and dangerously pale.

“I thought a thing followed me here.” She arches an eyebrow, countering his awaited scepticism. “I know, but there was this presence, all over me, and you have such oddities on your ship.”

She dares not say it. Ghost. She is, at the moment, afraid of him.

_The master may react with more savagery than the beast._

Under attack, her eyes are suddenly blazing. Clara is so good at playing alive.

As she retells what she felt -and didn’t see- she ostensibly quivers. And talks and describes so very lovingly the hands and breaths. Touches so familiar.

He takes the blow to the heart, left, before it ravages the brain. For a brief moment, he thinks: “River?”

His throat tightens. The TARDIS leans in.

_Don’t._

Phantoms do not exist, do they? Phantoms do not haunt their killers; memories do. Memories peter out and scorch on, leaving a trail of ashes, in the heart, in the mouth; looted he is left, not even soiled, but robbed and emptied; with ashes on his hands that he knew to be her bones and hearts.

Bowdlerised, he does not miss River. He pulverised her memory for the sake of his sanity, cut off the link to the TARDIS, erased her room; tearing her from her mother’s womb, but it was a faint she was clinging to. She hated him, spared him nevertheless, spoiled child.

For fear of flooding him out of her doors, she kept her memories of River locked away for herself, never displaying them to him.

He realises Clara is going on about this “ghost” and her hands and her ribs and her collarbone. He nearly scatters under the brutishness of it. He identifies immediately and with painful precision what piece of memory the TARDIS has been lavishing on Clara. That memory is all too fresh in his mind; River’s savage breath on the back of his head; her clenched teeth, her dried eyelashes, the dreadful taste of longing -a River who had just lived through Utah, a River who had just captured his young terrified lips, his terrified hearts. She left hers dry on his, withered.

In a way he envies but thanks his younger pathetically in love self for rushing to this River and patching up, and fixing, and loving her. And those moments, when he needed to go back and fix were numerous. He filled the blanks. Presently, he is left with nothing but the memories stuck in the corridors. He wasted those times on a heart enthralled. Maybe.

He doubts he would have the force to handle a distraught River at the moment. But a distraught River still is a River. He has none.

He wants to ground the TARDIS for spraying it on Clara, those precious moments and touches, not him. But he pleaded with her. He asked for it, didn’t he? Banned the memories, started a campaign of terror against his hearts and hurt her by his silence.

Clara stops her story, wide eyes and questions and innocence. She is flushed. River, even impressed on a ship’s database, would have that effect on anyone. He realises he has no right to lay this weight on her shoulders, the Ponds, River, his long gone happiness. There is nothing fair about that, is it?

“Clara? I did not want to let you there.”

Her hands coil protectively against the TARDIS dreaded wall.

“You let her down”, she states, not even judging, but with some trepidation in the voice. For her, it’s the end of a mystery.

He flinches. He did. But the TARDIS needs to share her pain, as when she donned her mourning shroud for him. Blues and metals to mirror the broken mechanism of his heart.

Clara’s eyes screw up.

“You are not alone in your grief, you know.”

How he knows it. Time-traveller, even the people he mourns are by his sides.

“She needed you.” He can tell by the way her voice is growing, tremulously but with such control, he is in for a good scolding. He suddenly feels like a little boy, whose girlfriend is eyeing, accomplice but victim, from behind the barking teacher.

“You don’t know what happened”, he counters, closing the space between them -and him and River’s last sanctuary.

“I don’t want to.” Her refusal to pry runs him over. Nearly wins him over.

“You really don’t know what you are doing.”

“No, I don’t and I haven’t known for a long time.” He stiffens. It all breaks down to it. Who she is, what she knows about him. “You dragged me into your mad life and it’s too beautiful to be true and you want to trust me. I see it. But don’t. You clearly have no idea what you are doing, with Skaldak, with Emma, with your ship, with me. You push people on the edge until... “, she squints, holding an index before his face. “They give you something.”

It’s now or never.

“Who are you?” But she doesn’t listen. He never has seen her this protective and assured. Except when she was another impossible girl. But they are not the same, are they? Oswin would have mocked him, Miss Montague shushed.

“What do you want from me? Make up your mind.” Her own, Clara jumps headfirst and tells him to stay behind, because he might get hurt.

“You are scared”, he reasons, in vain.

“I am. And by you. It doesn’t prevent me from running away. I don’t want you to be unable to run away when the danger comes. Back on Akhaten, at Caliburn house. I can’t always be with you. But she is. And right now, she needs you.”

“Clara! Don’t.”

“No, listen. Stop focusing on whatever is wrong with me and instead of staying cooped up in yourself when you think I am not looking, talk to her! I am not a distraction from whatever lover quarrel you had with your ship.” She is now poking at his chest with her diminutive hand.

With a nod and a confident pout, she splays her hands on him, leads him backwards straight to the wall and pins him there.

“Stay still and remember.”

With a swirl, she turns her back to him and struts down the corridor, right to the kitchen that surprisingly never has been closer.

Unless he takes into account that time when River had a sudden hot chocolate and croissants kink.

To be fair, it was entirely his fault.

_Do you really want this, Old Girl? Memories hurt._

He closes his eyes. The TARDIS and his thief dive together, resurrecting the feelings and wondrous sights.

This is a part of his personal 24/7 screening in which he slowly witnesses her emerging in their room.

River had lost her wits when he had panicked over an inch or two of blood-soaked jodhpurs.

Months of missing each other, badly. And they had fought each other by the end of the day.

She had cleaned her wound and disappeared in the library, he had nested his grimness in the gymnasium. None of them withdrew from their position. Night-in, the TARDIS had had them alone for herself. By the morning, surely willing to preserve those little lies when they wake up by each other’s side –he doesn’t sleep as much as her-, they returned to their room.

At the same time.

And the realisation of this mirror reflex, desire to make believe they had spent the night together, strangely shattered them. Anger had released them by the time they shuffled silently between the drawers –suddenly so confined a room they had-, side by side, in search of something to wear.

They brushed each other, their breath sent back at them by the walls, suffocating in the other’s presence. The rhythmic cameral tango led by a melody familiar and conniving drove them closer and closer, until he bluntly fled to the kitchen.

He flopped on a chair, surprised and annoyed by the short-cut the ship had devised for his pusillanimous hearts. The TARDIS in there displayed the uncharacteristic smell of sleep and morning, softly soothing and singing. As if she was still focused on their chamber. He imagined she was wrapping River in her arms, and, perhaps, as he had already witnessed her, caressing her skin. Golden and prickled in the morning. There was a certain taste and suppleness to it also and he wondered if she resented him for having kept to himself for so long the pastry-like morning skin of River.

The snort he let out snapped him out of his thoughts. He was simply being horny. And missing her.

The TARDIS grumbled, a resigned “bah” escaped him.

Her feet passed the door, not so silent, the first to catch his eyes; barefoot –and he could hear the TARDIS rejoicing at the contact. She had not changed, just thrown a long woollen robe over her shoulders.

This was a confession more than an invitation.

In a few steps, she was by the kettle. He had forgotten to heat water for her tea. He followed her feet in the room, eyes closed, imagining the hem of her robe dangling above her calves. The TARDIS nudged him and he finally looked at River; she was swirling, stepping carefully within his reach, an empty cup in each hand –he never drinks in the morning. This was the invitation.

He was reminded of the first time they shared a cup in her kitchen; early early hours and a gun were involved – his defiance, her playfulness. She was older, he so much younger. How she had looked at the TARDIS.

How she was then in her embrace.

Sat by her side, gratefulness swelled within his chest and he let himself smile. She relented. They had no time to spare on such stupidities. The robe –chosen by his ship, he suspected- was open, revealing a tank top and shorts barely concealing the large bandage on her thigh. Less rumpled than her.

From her skin and hair was rising a trail of night sweat, breath still slow and deep, tangy. No doubt the Old Girl convinced her not to wash or get dressed. She knew him too well. A certain redness was clinging to her cheek and the curl to her temple. The line of her shoulders in broken continuation of his own sleep-slumped ones was showing the late night among books –and certainly, on them, going by the tell-tale mark she was sporting on the forehead. She was incredibly unsexy and the gaze she was saving for her tea cup bottom was telling everything he needed to know about her state of awareness.

He shifted close to her, his cool thigh against hers against the warmth of the table and let the first impulse take hold of him; a hand behind her head, a kiss on her temple. Neck tilted, she looked up and the slight annoyance there sent sparkle in his hearts. It was a gaze of habit and retreat; giving in. The water was boiling behind them.

To find those habits and tales in each other’s every gesture was the only stitches they need. The air was toast-perfumed though he did not prepare any.

“Care for tea?” Her voice from afar.

“I’d rather have orange juice, thank you.” His voice back when he knew it.

 _Carry on_ , he hears her chant.

He saw her stopped before the bread box.

“There’re croissants in there. What have you done?”

“I may have had a little adventure with Gordon Ramsay. And we got to talk about wives. Apparently, from my description he decided you were a croissant and taught me to bake them.”

“Full of butter and preferably drowned in hot chocolate?”

The TARDIS hooted, River beamed at the thought.

“No, all curves and layers. And golden. And crusty. And you kinda remind me of the moon.”

“Not in this attire and certainly not this early. Mum did.” The TARDIS jealously howled. “You are a phone box, dear. Me, not so much.”

“But you do River…”

“If you insist I’m going to play very dumb and take it as a mean remark about my arse.”

He harrumphed and sat up. His hand sneaked to catch her waist and tug her against him. Obediently, she turned in his lap.

He let his palm travel on the flat of her stomach with the steadiness of a craftsman. Her glance was questioning; she had settled her mug on his shoulder and the other on the table by his side. She was following, head cocked, eyes green slits levelled at him, the slow climbing up her trunk.

He sensed the Old Girl’s request and accepted it. Time suddenly stretched. And he crept in under her shirt.

River let her head fall back and began laughing at the back of her throat but he pulled her in, the TARDIS shushing her and she bit her lower lip.

He began kneading and nudging, founding a rib and following it to the spine. With a push, he drew her close, stopping her with his other hand on the sternum. He followed the collarbone, drawing the curve of her shoulder before going down the pit between her thorax and arm until he reached the birth of the breast.

He could hear the distorted sound of life around them, curbed to fit their desire.

River eyes were now fully opened, pupils dilated. He could practically guess her pricked up ears under the glowing foam of her hair.

With patience, he traced the lower arc under the fabric, back and forth, resisting the urge to cup it fully.

The ship bent, twittered and spanned.

He stopped his finger just below the nipple.

River tensed, her hearts twittering; she was unable to follow the ship in her expansion.

Slowly, achingly, the index deployed, he climbed up the swell of her breast; her breathing now fully out of the pace of sleep, her chest would rise and fall, causing his fingers to press just so slightly on her skin. The slight variation and the chance for them to lose contact with each breath were excruciating. Sweat was forming on her skin, dampening dots by dots her top.

The lights were dimming around, mimicking the honey tint of dusk on Earth, casting them in gold.

“Wrong time of day,” he chuckled and the TARDIS trilled back.

Shining and golden River was now, and the deglutition painful for him. He fought back the salty speculative appetizer blossoming in his mouth. The progression of his finger on her breast was quelled, the tip of his finger fell back to the aerola. Circling it with application, he was determined to make it as hard on her as on him.

River was so still he thought for an instant the TARDIS had stopped her as well. She loved having her posing in the graceful curves her body in pleasure hits. She’d always wanted to be Hokusai.

The Old Girl spread time a little more but River pleaded.

“Please?”

Time crashed back to its normal stream and they all sighed. After having drawn the curve for what seemed like minutes -and calculating the ratio with that-, he perched up on her now hardened nipple and shot her a contented smile.

“See, like a croissant.”

He had forgotten.

She chants him out of his reminiscing and momentarily he wishes she has not. Presses him against her warm surfaces, the interior she had so easily relinquished for his peace of mind, the colours so brutally whipped into submission.

For him. It seemed he has made her wait too long. He, a timeless ship.

Time to resurface.

“I hate you.”

She warbles.

He scrambles to his feet, dusts off his trousers and combs his hair. The bow tie is adjusted.

“You really couldn’t give me a hand with the impossible Clara, could you?”

***

Space is pitch black and a boy grey and a girl, pretty in red, and a ship so old time lost track of her were tacking on the edge of the Universe.

The girl sits elbows on the knees, eyes unfocused, when the boy comes down the stairs stops a step above the hunched figure. He swings a little on his feet, unsure. She surmises his presence, his steady breathing; on the corner of her eyes, she can’t quite catch him. A sigh escapes her mouth and she pats the space beside her on the stairs. He slouches by her side, his long limbs struggling to bend into a sensible position. Mirroring the girl’s posture, his hands fold between his legs and his eyes glaze.

For minutes, they stay silent. Comfortable, her hand slips between them, and she worries the hem of her dress, fluttering. A timid smile stretches his lips and he hesitates to capture it.

They listen to the gentle whirr of the ship.

“Are we okay?”

He looks down to her expectant face.

“With her?” He stretches out to wrap an arm around her shoulders and smiles. “I think. What do you say about learning to drive her?”

The girl beams, jumps to her feet, tagging him along by the hand. They stand by the console; he points certain buttons, she questions. She follows his hands on the control panel before offering hers to be guided.

He laughs and she knits her brows.

“Nothing”, he roared, hopeful, and bounces on the spot.” Take the wheel. Not the wheel. I'll make it easy.” Gesturing at her, he walks past to grab a crank handle on the panel and starts reeling in. “Shut it down to basic mode for you.”

“Basic?”

She leans on beside him, petulant.

“Because I'm a girl?” She stands back and glares at him.

“No”, he retorts, unsettled, but slightly amused. Chastised, he turns on the ignition.

“Because _she_ is a lady.”


End file.
